The End of Greenwashing? Five Myths about Product Transparency

Products "earn" an EPD. Far from it. Manufacturers pay tens of thousands of dollars to get one, and the fact that a product has one tells you absolutely nothing about its environmental performance. You have to actually read the report to know whether the product is environmentally preferable or not. An EPD is like a nutrition label for building products. When's the last time you saw a 20-page nutrition label on your Cheerios? We're guilty of spreading this one ourselves, but it's not really true...at least not yet. Yes, the information in an EPD must follow a standard format, but that's where the similarly ends. For one thing, EPDs are completely voluntary--but also, we're very far from having an at-a-glance on-product label, although there are efforts to develop this. Here's one proposed by forward-thinking designers like Perkins + Will . EPDs are about science, not marke...